


2:00am

by novoaa1



Series: motherland: camp half-blood [1]
Category: Motherland: Fort Salem (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Ancient Greek Religion & Lore Fusion, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Camp Half-Blood (Percy Jackson), Demigod Abigail Bellweather, Demigod Raelle Collar, Demigod Scylla Ramshorn, Demigod Tally Craven, Demigods, F/F, McDonald's, Necromancy, Rick Riordan Demigod Universe | Riordanverse, Scylla Ramshorn needs a hug, Soft Raelle Collar, Twelve Gods of Olympus (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore), and raelle is immediately like 'dude wtf shes pretty AND awesome', cause she IS, no one likes scylla but for like basically no reason, scylla's abilities are very similar to that of nico di angelo's if you've read pjo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-08
Updated: 2020-08-08
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:33:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25778224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/novoaa1/pseuds/novoaa1
Summary: So evidently, Greek mythology isn’t make-believe, the gods and goddesses of Olympus are very much alive, and Apollo is Raelle’s dad.Very little of it is making even the faintest bit of sense, but the small fraction that does is more than enough to make Raelle’s head spin.Then she catches sight of a pretty girl with blue-green eyes and adorably bedraggled chestnut-brown hair sitting at the end of the docks and staring out over the vacant lake wearing the ghost of a smile like she knows something the rest of the camp doesn’t.Quite suddenly, she doesn’t feel like she’s spinning at a hundred miles an hour any longer. Time seems to slow, the dizziness plaguing her frenzied thoughts recedes, and it feels like she canbreatheagain.Or: Raelle finds herself at Camp Half-Blood, where she meets Tally and Abigail, and an alluring girl named Scylla.
Relationships: Abigail Bellweather & Tally Craven, Raelle Collar/Scylla Ramshorn
Series: motherland: camp half-blood [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1873414
Comments: 13
Kudos: 141





	2:00am

**Author's Note:**

> i dont know where this came from dude... i guess i'm just uber inspired when it comes to fort salem stuff right now? 
> 
> it's not by any means necessary to have read the percy jackson series before reading this... most of it is explained
> 
> except for the Pact made by the Big Three gods (zeus, poseidon, hades) after World War II—that they wouldn't sire any more demigods, because their offspring were just far too powerful and could bring about another world war
> 
> other than that, i'm pretty sure everything else is explained 
> 
> and yes, i'll proofread this... eventually........

So evidently, Greek mythology isn’t make-believe, the gods and goddesses of Olympus are very much alive, and Apollo is Raelle’s dad. 

Very little of it is making even the faintest bit of sense, but the small fraction that does is more than enough to make Raelle’s head spin. 

Then she catches sight of a pretty girl with blue-green eyes and adorably bedraggled chestnut-brown hair sitting at the end of the docks and staring out over the vacant lake wearing the ghost of a smile like she knows something the rest of the camp doesn’t. 

Quite suddenly, she doesn’t feel like she’s spinning at a hundred miles an hour any longer. Time seems to slow, the dizziness plaguing her frenzied thoughts recedes, and it feels like she can _breathe_ again. 

“Who’s that?” she questions, not bothering to curb her enamored stare.

“Oh, her?” Tally, an overwhelmingly sprightly girl (and her tour guide for the afternoon) with a toothy grin and pin-straight hazelwood-brown hair, says back. Raelle can’t quite be sure, but she thinks she detects a hint of uneasiness in the girl’s once-breezy tone. “That’s, um… That’s Scylla.”

Raelle finally manages to tear her gaze away from the alluring girl down at the docks long enough to flash Tally a dubious look. “Not a fan of hers, I take it?”

“No! No, it’s not that,” Tally scrambles to explain, wringing her hands nervously at her waist and darting her wide brown-eyed gaze from Raelle down to where the girl ’Scylla' sits and back again. “It’s just… well… no one really knows much about her. Not to mention, Abi _definitely_ doesn’t like her—"

“Abi?”

“My best friend here!” Tally informs her excitedly, practically bouncing on the balls of her feet. (It’s not like Raelle has much of a frame of reference here, but it’s still utterly mind-boggling to her that Tally’s godly parent is Ares.) “Daughter of Athena. A little prickly at first, but she’s the best.”

Raelle nods, not nearly matching Tally’s untapped enthusiasm but not dismissing it either. “And what’s Abi’s deal with Scylla?”

“I don’t know, actually,” Tally admits with a thoughtful frown. “I don’t think there was anything in particular, but—like, you know how some people just rub you the wrong way?”

Raelle nods again. 

“I think that’s just how it is with them. They aren’t, like, compatible, or… whatever.”

Raelle turns her focus back to Scylla. She hasn’t moved an inch—staring out over the water, swinging her ratty sneakers off the edge of the dock, smiling to herself like she knows Raelle’s watching her and she couldn’t give less of a damn either way. 

“Who is Scylla’s godly parent?”

Tally’s answer is quiet, uncharacteristically devoid of charisma. “Hades.”

_That_ gets Raelle’s attention. “Hades?” she repeats dumbly, turning to face Tally with an incredulous expression. “But I thought you said—"

“The Pact after World War II.” 

“Yeah.”

“Well, Hades broke it."

Raelle huffs out a disbelieving laugh. “Clearly."

“She gets a bit of a bad rap for that, too,” Tally says. She almost sounds… regretful. 

“That seems unfair.”

“It is.”

“So why aren’t _you_ her friend?”

At that, Tally blinks, seeming taken aback. “Huh?”

“Well, if you’ve nothing against her, and you don’t blame her for her dad going back on his word, why _not_ be her friend?”

“It’s… " Tally trails off, worrying her lower lip between her teeth, “complicated.”

“Doesn’t sound complicated to me.”

Tally sighs. “Look—you’re still new here, okay? There’s a lot that you don’t understand yet."

“What I understand is that there’s a girl our age whose dad made a big-time mistake and somehow, _she’s_ the one left paying for it.”

Tally is silent for a long moment. “Condemnant quo non intellegunt,” she murmurs out eventually, more to herself than to Raelle. 

“… Right.”

“Let’s just move on—we’ve only got an hour until dinner.”

— — 

“So, this is the newbie,” a dark-skinned girl with bangs and a prominent dimple in her chin greets her curtly, sliding into place across from Raelle at the picnic table with an ever-chirpy Tally in tow. “Abigail Bellweather. Daughter of Athena.” She lifts her chin haughtily, her stiffened posture ripe with self-importance. (Raelle kind of despises her on principle.) “And you are… ?"

“Raelle.” 

Abigail cocks a single well-manicured brow, something unreadable flitting across her chocolatey-brown-eyed gaze. “Not much of a talker, I see.”

Raelle shrugs, absentmindedly nudging the food around her plate with a fork. “Guess not.”

“We had a really good tour,” Tally adds, words muffled slightly around a mouthful of dinner roll, seeming more or less oblivious to the tension shrouding Abigail and Raelle as they stare each other down. “Raelle even healed a cut on Glory’s knee with her _bare hands_. It was _so_ cool!”

“A healer,” Abigail observes, sounding begrudgingly impressed… maybe even a little uneasy. “Daughter of Apollo, then?”

“Or so they tell me.”

Abigail angles herself towards Tally, lips pursed. “Does Alder know?”

Tally gulps nervously. “About what?”

Abigail rolls her eyes. “About the new girl’s knack for healing, genius.”

“The ’new girl’ is sitting right here, you know,” Raelle cuts in, her admittedly limited patience rapidly waning. “Who is Alder, and what does she care that I healed some chick’s skinned knee?”

Abigail’s brows creep towards her hairline. (Or her bang-line, as it were.) “Tally didn’t tell you? Alder is the camp director here. Tall, scary lady. Hazel-ish eyes, jawline sharp enough to cut a bitch—"

“Weirdly big on singing,” Tally supplements, a thoughtful crease between her brows. “Like, the throaty opera kind." 

“And as for why she’d care—Camp Half-Blood hasn’t seen a healer in… well, in a very long time. It’s not a gift typically afforded to demigods, especially not ones so young.”

“Powerful _and_ funny!” Tally sums up, flashing Raelle a blinding grin. “I _knew_ it.”

Raelle frowns, taking a moment to process this new information. “… Okay. So, I’m special. Or… whatever.”

“‘Special' is an understatement.”

“Look, I don’t know about special. Unusual? Sure,” Abigail corrects, by all accounts looking rather put out. Raelle smirks. “Don’t go getting a big head about it or anything. I already find you irritating.”

“Oh, the feeling is mutual,” Raelle assures her, voice dripping with only marginally playful derision. 

“Glad we’re on the same page, shitbird.”

_'Shitbird?’_

— — 

It’s pure happenstance that Raelle stumbles across her for the very first time. 

Not to mention, the circumstances are… well, they’re weird as fuck, for lack of a better wording. 

She’ll explain. 

There are exactly 6 other kids currently staying in the Apollo cabin—all blondes, all borderline obnoxiously musical, all painfully happy-go-lucky. 

Still, there’s something to be said for the strict midnight-o’-clock bedtime they all adhere to, because there’s no one up to witness Raelle as she sits bolt-upright in her bunk, wide awake for reasons she can’t possibly explain. It’s ear-splitting, truly, the noise in her heart; overwhelming in a way that’s nigh impossible to verbalize. It swells up inside her like a tidal wave of despair, pushing on the walls of her chest to expand until it hurts, until she fears the strain of it might tear her in two. 

She dresses quickly: sneakers, baggy black jeans and a red button-down flannel, then promptly slips out the back door and into the night. 

A glance at her phone before she shoves it in her back pocket tells her it’s just after 2:00 in the morning. 

It’s nice out, if not a little cold. The cloudless sky is dark overhead, dotted with twinkling constellations. The moon—a waning crescent—shines brightly besides Mars, illuminating some parts of their sleeping encampment in a pale silvery light and casting others into blackened shadows. 

Raelle jogs in the direction of the forge, cuts between the arena and the armory with apprehension in her chest and a million past hurts clouding her mind. 

She’s just breaching the edge of the woods, ready to lose herself in the thickets of evergreen forest, when she sees her—a lone figure dressed in a grey tank top and tiny black sleep shorts, standing over an ominous-looking pit in a clearing up ahead. Raelle approaches from behind without a care in the world for stealth—snapping twigs, labored breaths coming in audible pants. 

The person whirls around like they’ve been caught doing something they shouldn’t as Raelle stumbles out from the foliage, and she feels her heart stop in her chest at the sight that greets her. Bright blue eyes that glimmer like gemstones in the moonlight, wavy brown hair long enough to reach freckled pale shoulders, a pert button-shaped nose and pink lips slightly parted in shock. 

She’s holding grease-stained logo-emblazoned sacks of McDonald’s in either hand, too, which strikes Raelle as rather odd—still, she clears her throat awkwardly and does her very best to compose herself. She can’t quite help but feel as if she’s intruding on something sacred here, no matter how unsettling. 

“Um… Hi,” she greets lamely, shoving both hands in her pockets and feeling a slight flush tinge her cheeks. 

“Hi,” the girl—Scylla—says back, delicate features schooled into a perfectly unreadable expression. Her voice is like an angel’s—melodious and sweet; understated yet inexorably stirring. 

She doesn’t offer an explanation for the rectangular pit dug in the soil behind her, nor the McDonald’s clutched tightly in ether hand, and Raelle struggles for a long moment mentally debating how she might go about broaching the topic. 

“I thought outside food wasn’t allowed,” she blurts out, then seriously debates smacking herself in the forehead for saying something so _stupid_. 

The ghost of a smile curves Scylla’s lips, like she’s amused, and Raelle forgets about scolding herself for her utter lack of poise. “I won’t tell if you won’t.”

Raelle huffs out a laugh that’s half disbelieving, half relieved. “Deal.”

“You’re the new girl,” Scylla says then. 

It doesn’t sound like a question, but Raelle answers it anyhow. “Yep. Raelle Collar. What’s your name?”

“Scylla.” Something unreadable flits across Scylla’s shadowy blue-eyed gaze. “Though I’m surprised you don’t know that already.”

“Why’s that?”

“I’m not exactly what you’d call popular around here. Most kids are told to avoid me.”

“‘Cause Hades is your dad?”

Scylla raises a single brow. “So, you _do_ know who I am.”

Raelle resists the urge to bashfully duck her head. “Tally told me some things.”

“Then I’m sure Abigail Bellweather did, too.” Scylla heaves a quiet sigh, something like bitter surrender etched into her pretty features. “Look, I’m not doing anything bad, okay?”

“And, uh… What _are_ you doing?” Raelle asks curiously, careful to keep any trace of implication from her measured tone. 

Scylla watches her for a long moment, gaze narrowed. Eventually, the tense lines of her face ease as if she’s made up her mind about something, and she thrusts one grease-stained bag of McDonald’s forth for Raelle to take. 

“Hold this,” she says. 

Raelle does. 

With that, she turns on her heel to face the rectangular pit—empty save for roots and twigs and dying leaves. ( _A perfectly-sized ditch for a corpse_ , Raelle thinks with a shiver.) The brown paper bag of McDonald’s crinkles loudly as she opens it, but she seems to give the noise little mind.

“Over here,” she calls, brandishing three sandwiches bundled in disposable yellow wrappers and a super-sized fountain drink (its white plastic sides beaded with condensation). 

Raelle scrambles (and very nearly trips over her own feet in the process) to join her around the pit. 

“Let the dead taste again,” she intones quietly. “Let them rise and take this offering. Let them remember."

Raelle watches, dumbfounded, as she unwraps the sandwiches—triple cheeseburgers with pickles and tomatoes, by the looks of it—and tosses them forth into the pit. The fountain drink goes next—dark, carbonated liquid (Coke maybe?) poured into the ditch. 

All the while, Scylla mutters something under her breath, chanting in a language that sounds oddly familiar—Ancient Greek, though Raelle has _no_ idea how she knows that. Even weirder, she thinks she understands it—pieces of it, that is. Bitter remembrance, deceased souls reborn anew, and a hell of a lot about death. You know, the usual.

The soda churns within the grave, frothy amber bubbles rising to the top—like the Coke is rising on its own, swelling into a tiny ocean of fizzy seltzer. Tendrils of fog creep in from the edges of the clearing. Raelle shivers when it ghosts across her skin. 

And, speaking of ghosts—hordes of wispy figures begin to materialize amidst the fog, crowding the two of them from every side. They’re a curious shade of effulgent blue, translucent humanoid forms. Their features seem to solidify with every passing moment. 

Seemingly from nowhere, Scylla brandishes a tall sword—a katana. Its obsidian-black blade glints menacingly in the scant silvery light.

“I want my brother,” she tells the ghosts, keen cerulean eyes darting this way and that as pale blueish ghosts surround them from all sides. “He goes first, and then the rest of you may partake.” 

A lone nebulous figure approaches—a teenaged boy around their age, tall and gangly. His hair is dark, buzzed so short that it appears little more than a shadow on his scalp. Raelle can’t tell the color of his eyes, but she’s willing to be they’re a brilliant blue—just like Scylla’s. He’s dressed in baggy jeans and a 3/4-sleeve baseball shirt. The crooked smile on his tanned face appears genuine as he comes to a halt before Scylla, though Raelle can see a doleful sadness in his eyes that tears through her like a bullet to the chest. 

“Hey, sis,” he croaks. His warbled voice is like sandpaper, but Scylla doesn’t seem to mind. 

“Xander,” she breathes out reverently. 

“Who’s this?” he asks, jutting his chin over towards Raelle. “Finally found a nice girl to bring back and meet the family?”

Raelle’s sure she’s imagining it, but she thinks she sees Scylla flush. “Oh, we’re not—Um, this is Raelle.”

Raelle gives an awkward wave. 

“I got your favorite—triple cheeseburgers and a Coke.”

The boy—Xander—huffs out a chuckle. (It sounds like nails on a chalkboard.) “You’re too good to me, Scyl.”

— — 

“Freaked out yet?” Scylla asks, passing Raelle a spicy McChicken and a kid's juicebox. 

“Why would I be?”

“Well, you just watched me summon the soul of my dead brother from the Underworld for a social visit at 2 in the morning, so… "

“Yeah… Makes being Apollo’s kid seem pretty lame in comparison, that’s for sure.”

Scylla visibly blanches. “What?”

“Well, that was, like… so _cool_ , you know?” Raelle exclaims, nudging Scylla’s shoulder with her own and basking in the angelic sound of her ensuing giggle. “I wish I could do that.”

A hint of an embarrassed flush stains Scylla’s pale freckled cheeks beneath the moonlight as she sips Dr. Pepper through her straw, and Raelle thinks she’s never seen a sight so beautiful. “Word around camp is, you’re pretty impressive yourself.”

“Nurse Collar, at your service,” she offers before dropping into a deep, exaggerated bow. 

Scylla giggles. “You’re cute." 

— — 

(20 minutes later, Raelle has Scylla pressed up against a tree, and they’re kissing like it’s the end of the world—open-mouthed and desperate, wet and warm and _messy_ in a way that’s nothing short of perfect.

Scylla tastes like apple slices and Dr. Pepper and something that’s all her own—tangy and sweet, heady with want. Raelle adores it, especially as she gasps these precious keening whimpers into Raelle’s mouth that only serve to make their frenzied kiss all the sweeter—like cotton candy melting on her tongue. 

Every mewl, every moan, every keening _sound_ sends a thrill zipping its way down Raelle's spine like a spark of lightning, setting her entire body alight with white-hot molten _desire_. 

It’s intoxicating—kissing her, feeling Scylla’s slender body writhe and squirm against her own, the sheer magnitude of _want_ that wells unbidden in her chest with a voracity that’s nothing short of dizzying. 

She never wants it to end.)

— —

**Author's Note:**

>  _condemnant quo non intellegunt_ | latin for "they fear/condemn what they do not understand"
> 
> let me know what you think? fr comments make my whole day<3
> 
> (my [tumblr](https://psyches.co.vu/) or just search me up @ultralightdumbass to come talk to me there!)


End file.
